" None of these fruits hang upon the vigorous
boughs of our friend's tree. He is rather like that detestable and
spidery thing the araucaria, which has a wound for every tender hand,
and invites no bright-eyed feathered songsters to perch or build among
its sinister branches.
The only critic who helps me is the critic whose humility keeps pace
with his acuteness, who leads me gently where he has himself trodden
patiently and observantly, and does not attempt to disfigure and ravage
the regions which he has not been able to desire to explore. The man
who will show me unsuspected connections, secret paths of thought, who
will teach me how to extend my view, how I may pass quietly from the
known to the unknown; who will show me that stars and flowers have
voices, and that running water has a quiet spirit of its own; and who
in the strange world of human life will unveil for me the hopes and
fears, the deep and varied passions, that bind men together and part
them, and that seem to me such unreasonable and inexplicable things if
they are bounded by the narrow fences of life--emotions that travel so
long and intricate a path, that are born with such an amazing
suddenness and attain so large a volume, so fierce a velocity--this is
the interpreter and guide whom I would welcome, even if he know but a
little more than myself; while if my guide is infallible and
disdainful, if he denies what he cannot see and derides what he has
never felt, then I feel that I have but one enemy the more, in a place
where I am beset with foes.
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